“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.” Hosea 2:14
The book of Hosea is a bittersweet story of the love God has for his adulterous wife, Israel. And how he pursued her to win her back.
It has come to hold a special place in my heart.
My name is Prisca, and I am Markos’ wife. That sentence alone gives my heart a chill because, you see, my story is also bittersweet. When I first met Markos, I was easily swept off my feet. He was handsome beyond a dream and his deep, base voice stole my heart. And he was so easy to talk to — I would spend hours upon hours talking to him when we were together, and, when apart, dreaming about what I would I would say to him when I saw him once more. I wanted him, to be held by him, to be loved by him. And what was even more perfect, he wanted me. He pursued me.
It was a fairy tale romance.
People would tell me that the love would one day fade, but I didn’t believe them. I was horrified that anybody would ever suggest such a thing to me — We were different. We weren’t just infatuated — we had a deep, romantic connection, and I just knew it would last forever.
As if cursed (the way fairy tales seem to always go), that love began to “fade” within the first year of our marriage. We started fighting. We neglected each other. We lived independent lifestyles. I can remember the first day Markos actually yelled at me — it tore a ragged hole in my fairy tale romance, and a small seed of hate was planted in the debris. I began to believe those naysayers from before our marriage. Love just didn’t last and I mourned this loss.
Markos started taking me to marriage counselors. He still believed that our love could be restored. I saw him as foolish, and hated being forced to tell my story to a complete stranger over and over again. We left each session, more bitter and torn apart than when we arrived.
Then Markos introduced me to Marriage Builders. He looked like an excited boy, fi
nding a map that would lead him to the greatest treasure imaginable. I believe my first words to him were: “Yeah right, I’m not going to talk to some guy on the phone about sex!” He quietly started working the program on his own. I noticed a major change in him — and began to wonder if maybe he weren’t as big a jerk as I thought him to be.
He persuaded me to go the the Marriage Builders weekend in Minneapolis. The biggest selling point was that if I were to go to the sessions with him, he would take me shopping at the Mall of America. I didn’t relish the idea of sitting through anymore marriage sessions, but he knew how to entice me and I went. The sessions actually intrigued me for a change. And we spent the whole weekend having fun, like two teenagers dating each other for the first time. It was a breath of fresh air.
We learned about each others emotional needs (I so desperately wanted conversation), and the lovebusters that we believed would end our marriage if not dealt with (markos still had regular angry outbursts). For a while, I had hope.
But, back home, the fights continued. I continued to feel neglected. And his account in my lovebank dwindled deep down into the red. Six months after we went to the seminar, I was crying to him because he would not talk to me. In an angry outburst he said “Find somebody else to talk to!” That was it. The moment I first hated him. I hated him. I finally, really hated him.
I retreated from him. Dr. Harley calls this the state of withdrawal. I no longer cared for him. I no longer wanted him to meet my emotional needs for me. If he tried to, I only hated him more for the effort.
But I was terribly lonely. I turned to Facebook, of all things. I’m not the kind of person that has a whole lot of friends — I’m an introvert, and enjoy a small group of close friends. But on Facebook, I could be different. It was so much easier to be outgoing and chat with a variety of “friends.” Markos and I had just recently “joined” our accounts on Facebook, too, and so now my pool of friends to talk with had more than doubled. I started chatting with church members, and family, and Markos’ male friends.
Facebook started to consume my days. When I was happy, I posted. When I was sad, I posted. When Markos said something to me that was particularly cruel, I turned to Facebook. It became a haven.
And there was one man in particular that I looked forward talking to. He was sweet. He was funny. He liked to listen to me. He thought I was smart. We enjoyed the same things. He let me talk about my kids. I began anticipating notes from him. I was in a whirlwind that I thought I would never experience again — the giddy feeling of being in love. The thought of Markos seeing these interactions made me extremely nervous, so I started hiding my trail. I knew Markos could not access Facebook from work, even from our joint account. So I was able to spend my days having fun with my “friend,” as long as I was sure to delete all messages before Markos got home.
I justified this. Markos had told me that I should find someone else to talk to. So I did. He told me to do it. Right?
I began neglecting my kids. All I wanted was HIM. I was consumed. It felt so wonderful and special. I felt special again. I took my wedding ring off that Christmas, with the intent of never putting it back on.
Meanwhile, Markos was trying to meet my emotional needs. He was still following the Marriage Builders program and he had taken an anger management class to learn to eliminate his anger. But nothing was working. He was spinning his wheels and didn’t know why — he didn’t know that I was in love with someone else.
I had no intention of ever telling him, either. I may have been drugged up on the allure of the other man (OM, as they are often called), but I was smart enough to know that Markos was the one providing the roof over my head and the food on my table. I saw this as a sweet arrangement: I would let Markos keep providing for my physical needs, and for the needs of my children, but that was it. I would go to OM for any other need I had.
Our messages turned to sexual flirting. I justified it even more: Markos had told me to find someone else. He was getting what he asked for. No wrong there. Right?
But guilt was beginning to build: Part of me knew there was no future with OM. I would look at my kids every morning, and start to cry. I knew I was hurting them. I didn’t care worth a flip about Markos, but I knew my kids were suffering because of me. But I continued to seek OM out. I could not seem to stop — and when I sat down at my computer, I had NO DESIRE to stop.
I once suggested that Markos turn to porn or visit a prostitute. This would only justify what I was doing myself. No one would blame me if they ever found out what he was doing. Right? He didn’t fall for that.
Markos still pursued me. That was getting to be pretty annoying. I just wanted to be left alone, to do my own thing, and not have the constant reminder that he was there.
Soon after, a friend emailed me. She had also been through Marriage Builders, and wanted to help me with my marriage. Over the course of a month, we talked and I ended up confessing to her what I was doing. She strongly encouraged me to talk to him myself. I spent several days tossing back and forth between confessing and not confessing. Of course, I did not want to talk to Markos: he was a monster. He would be cruel. I hated the thought of giving up OM for my dreadful husband. And I just knew he would probably toss me out. On the other hand, I knew if I didn’t tell him, SHE would. That’s what Marriage Builders people do.
I decided to text him. I figured if he blew up, I could load up the kids and leave before he got home. His first response crumbled my pride. Not because it was full of anger — no, it was surprisingly calm. But he knew the OM’s name. How could he know? I was so careful. I still don’t know how he knew, but he did. I wasn’t as clever as I thought I was. I felt so very small at that point. Naked.
That text was the first step on the real road to recovery for us. He didn’t blow up at me like I expected. He was eerily calm, and that, in its own way, unnerved me.
He didn’t expose me — He did ask me to write a letter to my family and to the elders in my church, confessing what I did . He insisted that I send the letter before a big family birthday party for my daughter. I wanted to wait, but he wanted everyone to know. I did it because I feared that he would divorce me and I would lose my kids, and yes, I was pretty angry about that. I hated him even more, and literally did not speak a word to him for quite some time.
I do not recommend anybody follow our lead in how that was handled — I guarantee you there would have been a lot less resentment and anger to get over if he had just exposed me rather than making me confess to my family. Exposure is therapeutic for the wayward.
After I sent the letter, he came into the room and found me curled up on the bed. He tenderly caressed the tears on my face and kissed me on the forehead. I shuddered. The monster was not being so monstrous, but rather gentle. And it wasn’t fair. I needed him to be hateful, so that I could believe I was really justified. He wasn’t playing his part right.
He took me and the kids to a picnic in the park the day after the birthday party and the letter, and I sat up at the car and sulked and cried while he played with the kids next to the lake.
The day I compared him to OM, and told him how much better OM treated me, he looked me straight in the eyes and said “I will not share you, not even emotionally.” Again, another shudder.
The typical wayward wife will be angry and unremorseful well into recovery. But recovery is still possible — that is, if all contact with OM is cut off. It took me awhile to cut off all contact. I blocked him on Facebook initially, but I was still going to Facebook. That pining for the OM was keeping me triggered, and keeping my lovebank closed to Markos. We eventually shutdown and blocked Facebook completely. This was vital to our recovery.
We adopted the Extraordinary Precautions found in Surviving an Affair on pages 66-67. These were also vital to our recovery. The thing about recovery from something as devastating to a marriage as an affair, the road is very narrow. Each step must be taken carefully, or you will stumble off the road and the marriage will lie in ruin.
I HATED my husband. I loathed him. I tried to trap him into being unfaithful himself. I blamed HIM for my Emotional Affair. He still won me. He relentlessly pursued me. He allured me, and spoke tenderly to me. He went through hell, and put up with all kinds of barbs and stab wounds from me, all to win ME. He saved me. He is my Hosea.
“I will restore to you the years the locusts have stolen …” Joel 2:25
I have spoken with a lot of people who have had affairs. Frequently these people get into a lot of study and searching, looking for an answer to some question like “Why did I have an affair?” or “What is broken about me, what is wrong with me, that I would have an affair?” or “What is wrong with me that I was looking for something else outside of my marriage?”
Feeling desire for someone you are not married to is not a sign that there is something wrong with you. That is something completely normal and natural that happens to people who are close to someone of the opposite sex. You should realize that if you act on that desire, you will hurt the person you have made a solemn vow to care for. And you should also realize that if you remain in contact with the person you are feeling desire for, they will make Love Bank deposits in their account in your Love Bank, and your feelings for them will only increase. That’s how everybody’s Love Bank works. So if you find yourself attracted to somebody else, the thing to do is to 1) tell your spouse, and 2) break off all contact with the person you are feeling desire for, for life.
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